Doug Feith
wikipedia:Douglas J Feith = feith on spanish courts = From dougfeith.com: " Recent Items of Note * Spanish Guantanamo Affair * House Judiciary Hearing on Detainee Treatment * New York Times Op-ed: "Radio-Free Swat Valley" * Hudson-RedState New Media Forum ____________________________________ Spanish Prosecutor Rejects Guantánamo Charges - Complaint Described as Fraudulent ("fraudulenta") On April 17, 2009, the chief prosecutor of Spain's national trial court, Javier Zaragosa, advised that the Guantánamo complaint against me and five other Bush administration officials should not proceed. Spanish attorney general Cándido Conde-Pumpido made the following remarks about the complaint on April 16: Cándido Conde-Pumpido 1) "I sincerely believe it's a fraudulent complaint." Original Spanish: "Sinceramente creo que es una querella fraudulenta." 2) He explained that he wanted to avoid having the Spanish national trial court "turned into a toy" and he said that the cited complaint is "a fraudulent penal action" that attempts a "judicial artifice." Original Spanish: Según explicó, pretende evitar que este órgano judicial español "se convierta en un juguete" y aseguró que la citada querella es "una acción penal fraudulenta" que pretende un "artificio jurídico"." 3) Baltasar Garzón, the investigative Spanish magistrate who became famous for championing the prosecution of Augusto Pinochet, is promoting the Guantánamo case. In an obvious reference to Garzón, Conde-Pumpido said: "It's obvious that we cannot support this action, and it's also obvious that the policy of the Prosecutor is to defend to the death the exercise of universal jurisdiction by the Audencia Nacional, but keep it from being turned into a toy in the hands of people looking for a certain celebrity or attempting political action." Original Spanish: "Es indudable que no podemos apoyar esa acción y es indudable también que el criterio de la Fiscalía es el de defender a muerte el ejercicio de la jurisdicción universal por parte de la Audiencia Nacional, pero evitar que se convierta en un juguete en manos de personas que buscan un determinado protagonismo o intentan una acción política." ____________________________________ Background on the Spanish Affair A complaint brought before the Spanish courts sought the indictment of six Bush administration officials, including me. The author of the complaint who gave interviews to the New York Times is a lawyer and convicted terrorist named Gonzalo Boyé. This threat of prosecution challenges the integrity of the U.S. government. The legal theory makes no distinction between former and current officials. It claims that U.S. officials can be criminally punished by a foreign court for official work they do for the American people, as if the U.S. political and judicial systems don’t deserve any more respect than did the Nazi government of Germany. Moreover, what the complaint says against me is false, as I pointed out in a April 3 Wall Street Journal piece and my appearances on the O'Reilly Factor, the Glenn Beck Program, and the Hugh Hewitt Show. As Under Secretary of Defense, I took a strongly pro-Geneva-Convention position and the written record proves this. The complaint inaccurately claims that I aimed to undermine the Geneva Convention. As highlighted in a recent article in the New Yorker, the complaint was inspired by the work of Philippe Sands. As Gonzalo Boyé stated, "Let me just say that he Sands played a very big role in my thinking. His book showed me who the targets were." Sands’s book, Torture Team, is a dishonest work full of inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and distortions. I detailed Sands's errors in my July 15, 2008 testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee and in subsequent letters to subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler. All the material from the hearing is available, as is the audio file and written transcript of the interview I gave Sands as he was writing his book. The interview transcript shows that Sands, in his book, grossly misreported our interview. " = Phillipe Sands = ''And Doug Feith described to me how he and General Myers worked together, and that he, in particular, took the steps to ensure that none of these detainees could rely on Geneva.''Democracy Now, 2008 4 3 = See Also = *General Myers = Notes =